


The Lion, the Witch, and the Tricksters

by assassin_trifecta



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: DA Secret Santa, Dragon Age Secret Santa, Dragon Age Secret Santa 2015, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 10:00:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5535677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/assassin_trifecta/pseuds/assassin_trifecta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nina Surana never thought that her interests lay in the same line as the Inquisition's, but when she was contacted by the spymaster, she found that she might have more needs in common when she thought. Arriving in Skyhold late on the eve of Satinalia, Nina could never have considered the present she would get the next morning to come.</p><p>Written as a gift to noxfauna for the DA Secret Santa!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lion, the Witch, and the Tricksters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noxfauna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxfauna/gifts).



> To Nox,
> 
> I'm sorry that it was so poorly edited (primarily, not at all) as this Christmas, especially these past few days, have been tremendously hard for my family and myself. This might not be what you want or what you were expecting, but I hope that it's something that you'll enjoy.
> 
> I'm also terribly sorry for probably completely butchering your OC, but I thought it would be more personal that way. I put my best effort into it, but it's always tricky writing someone else's characters.
> 
> That being said, I hope you like this, and I hope you had a very happy holiday season :)
> 
> Hopefully,  
> Sam <3

After the Ferelden circle fell apart, things changed. She became a full-fledged Warden – and soon after, the Commander of the Grey of Ferelden. It was an impressive title for an elf who had been banished from her alienage for burning her mother past recognition. She used to be scared of herself, of her magic, but using it for the Grey Wardens? Saving all of Thedas from another Blight? Using her magic to help people was a wondrous feeling.

            But it didn’t last long.

            Only a few years after her installment as the Warden-Commander, Nina knew she had more important work to do. For herself and her fellow Wardens. She was low on time left to live, and she could see it every time she woke up in the morning. The dim of her lyrium eyes, the bags that hung under them. They weren’t the product of over-working herself. Nina knew it was the taint catching up to her. So she moved quickly.

            She set out on a search for the cure to her problem, and that was the last many of her friends in the Wardens had heard of her. She kept a small contingent of soldiers with her – good men that she trusted well enough to keep their mouths shut about her business – in her travels. Their group kept mostly to themselves, and when they were not fighting together they were drinking companions. Rank was lost. All was well.

            And then the sky blew up.

            She had already known of the conclave at Haven – had decided to stay away from the town, considering her history with that place was nightmarish at best. She and her wardens ran into pockets of demons after that, and while she couldn’t do much, Nina did her best to stabilize the area around the tears in the veil that the demons continued to spring from. It was needless to say that the demons hampered her ability to find the cure for the taint that she was looking for. But she continued to search through old ruins and remnants of Blights long past. There were Darkspawn and demons, rebel mages and eventually Templars with a corruption like the taint that she found horrifyingly familiar but could not place.

            Eventually, however, there was something that found Nina instead.

            Scouts from the Inquisition, they said. She’d heard of it, heard of the Herald of Andraste turned Inquisitor. Nina had taken no interest in these things, though she was sure their goals might have coincided at one point. She had other things to do, and the Inquisitor was undoubtedly too busy closing the Breach to entertain the Warden from Ferelden that was undertaking a goal that was way over her head.

            But there were Inquisition scouts standing at the edges of her camp one morning, and after a scare that involved too much fire for Nina’s taste and a few minor burn wounds, they got down to business.

            “The Wardens at Skyhold need your help, Commander,” Sister Rejeanne told her with a straight face and a down-to-business tone. “The Inquisitor needs your help.”

            “I don’t know what good I’ll be, but I’ll come.” Nina remarked, handing over the Sister a warm cup of coffee that would hopefully take the chill out of her. She had no idea how long these scouts had been looking for her, or when the last time they had a warm night of sleep was. Her Wardens were taking care of the other scouts similarly, and Nina was glad they were following her example. The Firstfall weather was always harsh, made only worse so by the camp’s altitude. With Satinalia around the corner, these scouts could use the warmth and kindness.

            Rejeanne had told her of Adamant. She’d learned of Corypheus. If there was anything that Nina didn’t like, it was Darkspawn. One of the evil bastards that started it all was knocking at her door and she wouldn’t turn this opportunity down. Perhaps her goals and the Inquisitor’s were aligning more than she would have previously thought.

            And that was how Nina found herself in Skyhold. She’d sent Nathaniel a letter to where he was currently in Command at Vigil’s Keep – where he belonged, in her opinion – and one to Weisshaupt to inform the First Warden of her involvement. She wasn’t sure if they would be pleased, but that was their issue to take with her. Perhaps she would actually get direct correspondence from them, for once.       

            It was dark when Nina arrived at Skyhold with the scouts and her warden companions, but by the presence of the wreath above the door to the entrance hall and the raucous behavior coming from what she guessed was the tavern, the Warden-Commander could only guess that the sun had just gone down on the eve of Satinalia.

            “Would you like to participate in the revelry?” Sister Rejeanne asked her, the scout’s voice quiet compared to the partying in the tavern. “I’m sure the Inquisitor is among his companions in the tavern.”

            But if Rejeanne hadn’t seen it before, it would have been obvious by the look of longing on Nina’s face when she glanced towards the comparatively quiet fortress. The scout took the commander to her quarters while the other Wardens went on their way to join the revelry and introduce themselves to some of their Orlesian counterparts. Nina had never been more grateful for a quiet night’s rest in her life. The trek from her camp to the Inquisition was long, tiresome, and cold, and though Nina had been through relatively worse, she was worn and much older than she had been during the Blight.

            “Watch yourself when you wake,” Rejeanne remarked when they had stopped in front of a dark wooden door that Nina only assumed was her chambers. “There are plenty of tricksters around the castle, I don’t doubt that there will be Satinalia tomfoolery throughout all of Skyhold.” With that, the scout turned and let her be, wishing her a pleasant goodnight afterwards.

            She hardly even noticed that she was given a dignitary’s quarters that weren’t entirely dissimilar to the ones she held in Vigil’s Keep. Nina dropped her travelling bags near the door and peeled off her armor as she shambled to the adjacent washroom, feeling the exhaustion seep in deeper and deeper as she went. There was water in the washroom, and a deep tub. Though there were no heating runes, she poured in the lukewarm liquid and used her own flames to raise the temperature.

            She bathed, she dried, and draped herself in the robe that was beside the tub before she moved back into the living quarters. Nina toweled off her blond locks before falling into the bed, not even bothering to change into her sleeping clothes.

\---

Nina woke to a pounding on the chamber doors.

            “A moment!” The elf shouted hastily. She’d been startled awake, and for a brief moment even forgot where she was. Horror briefly passed through her when she realized that it might be the Inquisitor banging on her door, and there she was in a half-tied bath robe and no smallclothes, her hair in frizzes and knots from improper drying before bed. Still, she worked as quickly as possible to put on her basic traveling outfit, raking her hands through her hair in order to get rid of some of the knotting. Another impatient pounding at the door, and Nina was flying forward, hand outstretched to wrench the offending wooden frame open and greet the Inquisitor.

            But the sight that met her there when she opened the door was not one that Nina Surana expected to see in the rest of her short life. Not after everything that happened in her past, in the Circle.

            A breathless beast of a man stood before her, his eyes wide and lips parted into an open ‘o’ that was both endearing and embarrassing at the same time. His hair – which she remembered being strict and straight on his best days, pushed back and down and into submission, dark with oil and water to keep it in check – was almost unruly, blond curls pushed back, but out of control. He hadn’t been taking care of himself, by the tired and sick looks in his eyes, and the unshaven scruff on his chin and neck. But he was still him. Still recognizable under all that armor and the strain of the years.

            Cullen Rutherford stared at Nina as though she was the highest blessing the Maker could bestow upon him.

            She looked at him with the wary eyes of a beloved owner bitten by a traitorous dog.

            “They told me –“ He started, stopping briefly to take a moment and reconsider his statement. “They told me the Hero of Ferelden arrived late last night.” He swallowed, and she watched the nerves flow down his throat and practically choke him. “Nina –“ Cullen continued, his eyes searching for the forgiveness that had eluded him for ten years. “Nina, please –” The former Templar choked on his words, and Nina took a cautionary step back.

            “What are you doing here, Ser Rutherford?”

            The name, the title, something dislodged the lump in Cullen’s throat that had been building ever since he had heard the name Surana on the scout’s lips. He reached forward to take her arms in his hands, but the flinch of her body he saw when he did so shamed him so greatly that his hands dropped to his sides and his eyes cast to his feet.

            “When we met last, Nina, I was… cruel,” Cullen started again, finally swallowing down the nervousness that threatened to push him away from her, tail between his legs like a scolded hound. “I said terrible things, and I was in such a foul state that I… I was never able to apologize. I was so filled with hate after the horrors of that day that… that I was undeserving of you, even afterwards. I am… I am the Inquisition’s Commander now. I am a different man, Nina, if you would only forgive me, I could be deserving of you once more, I swear I could-“

            But Nina held up a finger to halt him, her hand ungloved in her haste and at risk to the sensitivities that fire mages were prone to. She had thought through these things after the initial hurt from the fallen Circle, and though it had taken her long, her thoughts mingled together in disdain and affection, she had come to forgive her errant knight for the horrors he had spouted at her. He had been cruel, but he had been reasonable.

            Looking up at him, about to part her lips and bestow the forgiveness upon him that he so sought, was when Nina saw it.

            The oval leaves and the little white berries, shining in the morning light from the halls and from her chambers, right in the doorway and dangling above Cullen’s head, was the mistletoe that characterized the romance of Satinalia. Nina’s freckled cheeks flushed ever darker when she remembered the warning of Sister Rejeanne the night before, when she was sure there was no such offending shrub above her head. The tricksters in the castle, Nina was certain, had happened to choose her door to place the traditional berries above.

            Cullen had little time to turn his head and consider what the mage had been staring at. Nina was on the tips of her toes in a moment’s notice, the courage that had built up in the pit of her stomach at the sight of the shrub taking hold in their own mischievous ways.

            The Commander let out a surprised gasp against them, but he took no issue when Nina’s lips planted against his own, nor when her flame calloused fingers tangled in his hair.

            And Nina, though the courage in her stomach was quickly turning to nerves, could only be pleased by the parting of his lips, and how natural it felt to have Cullen’s arms slide back around her waist after ten long years.


End file.
